Today’s Gang of 8 Fraud: “Back Taxes”

Schumer-Rubio Fraud O’ the Day: You know the alleged requirement, heavily advertised by supporters of “comprehensive” immigration amnesty, that previously illegal immigrants will have to pay “back taxes” in order to become legal? Turns out that’s basically a fraud too– like so much else in the Schumer-Rubio “Gang of 8″ amnesty bill. Politico had the story last week [E.A.]:

Negotiators had to choose between a hard-line approach favored by Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), that would have required immigrants and employers to painstakingly piece together a tax history so the government could collect what is owed and a less burdensome option of focusing on people who already have a past-due bill with the Internal Revenue Service.

Guess which approach they chose!

They chose the milder approach and punted the details to the Treasury Department and IRS to hash out down the road.

In other words, it looks as if illegal immigrants will only have to pay back taxes if the IRS has already moved to assess them for it–which would be why the text of the bill (pages 68-69) says they only have to pay ”Federal income taxes assessed in accordance with section 6203 of the Internal Revenue Code,” which is the section on assessments. What about income taxes that weren’t paid or assessed because illegal immigrants were working off the books, or using fraudulent Social Security numbers? No worries. The Gang of 8 will not collect them.

This despite Senator McCain’s confident boast, earlier this year, that

“We can trace their employment back,” he said. “It doesn’t take a genius.”

Apparently, “[e]arly discussions included requiring applicants to file a complete work history with salary information so that the IRS could backtrack those wages to figure out how much should be owed.” But somehow, despite the tough,-as-nails negotiating posture of McCain and Marco Rubio, “[t]hat idea was quickly dismissed.” Hey, if the IRS doesn’t already know, the IRS doesn’t need to know! What happens in Aztlan stays in Aztlan.